Taxes cut in effort to lift exports
June 23, 2009
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NIGHTMARE parking problems
February 1, 2009
NIGHTMARE parking problems could come to an end as plans are put forward to build a commuter car park.
People living in Theydon Bois have not been able to park outside their own front door because of restrictions introduced to prevent commuters leaving cars in the area.
And commuters have been forced to drive into work rather than use the tube because there is nowhere to park their cars.
But a man from Epping could solve all of their problems with his plans to construct up to 280 spaces next to Theydon Bois tube station.
George Dilloway owns the former Old Forester Club land off Abridge road and decided the area would be ideal for a car park.
He said: “The council haven’t provided any options for car parking in the area and at the moment about 60 people are already dumping their cars there illegally everyday because there is nowhere else for them to go with all the double yellow lines. It’s a major problem.”
Mr Dilloway is hoping that Transport for London will agree to open up the entrance to the tube station to make the car park even more accessible for commuters.
He added: “If they expanded the entrance it could be on the same side of the road as the car park.
“It would also help ease the commuter problem in other areas like Epping where parking is also a nightmare. If you’re not there by 6.30am there’s no spaces left.”
The plans were welcomed by residents.
Clive Cooper from Theydon Park Road is unable to park his car outside his home because of yellow line restrictions introduced to stop commuter parking.
He said: “The restrictions prevent us from parking on our road between 10am and 11am. But that means I can’t leave my car there during the day because I can’t very well come home and move it during that time.
“If the car park solves the problem and means that these restrictions can be lifted then it’s a good thing.
“I can’t get the train to work at the moment and have to take the car, it’s nonsense. It’s affecting everyone and has caused so much disruption. Something definitely needs to be done.”
Alison Harvey from Cloverly Road in Ongar used to park in Theydon Bois before the restrictions were put in place.
But she was forced to use a friend’s driveway in Epping to get to work when the yellow lines were introduced.
She said: “I’m on maternity leave now but before I left I couldn’t find anywhere to park and had to use my friend’s drive. I didn’t want to do that forever and I was looking into somewhere else to park when I go back to work.
“It will be great if they do make a car park and will certainly put my mind at rest.”
But not everyone welcomed the plans.
A spokeswoman from Theydon Bois Action Group (TBAG) said: “The business plan for the car park is unsustainable, the car park would be of no benefit to local people, it is too far from the station and it will cause traffic problems on a dangerous stretch of the Abridge Road.
“It will not alleviate parking problems in the village as commuters will continue to park for free on our roads.
“It would have to be lit and the access road stretching uphill will cause a significant loss of openness on the Green Belt.”
People have until January 20 to submit an opinion on the car park application.
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LPG Automotive Tanks that May leak LPG Recalled
February 1, 2009
There has been a national recall of more than 13,500 LPG automotive tanks that may leak liquid LPG.
Axiom-brand hand taps on the tanks may have been fitted with an undersized O-rings, leading to the potential leaks.
The problem affects tanks fitted between November last year and February this year across the country.
LPG cylinder manufacturer APA is attempting to contact all motorists with the affected product.
In the meantime motorists have been advised not to refill the LPG tank, to avoid parking in a confined space and to contact their installer to have the affected part replaced.
Source:Â Â Â Â Â http://arafura.axxs.org
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Need a parking place? Good luck
September 6, 2008
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“You always hope it will be better,” said Bracey, who ended up parking a half-mile from the shop where he was buying a gift for his brother.
This month, millions of Americans could find themselves in a similar predicament, fruitlessly orbiting packed parking lots in shopping centers, malls and downtowns as the holiday shopping season builds toward a peak.
They are the victims of a growing national parking crunch, the product of ever-increasing numbers of cars and scarcer places to put them in many cities.
In the past four decades, the number of registered vehicles has risen nearly 170% and the ranks of licensed drivers have doubled, Federal Highway Administration figures show.
The infrastructure is struggling to accommodate the crush. Many cities are experiencing downtown rebirths with new condos, hotels and office buildings, but the amount of parking on streets remains largely a fixed asset.
The value of parking in a tony urban neighborhood can be seen dramatically in Boston, where spots can be sold. An anonymous buyer bought a space in a Back Bay alley for a record $250,000. Prices for downtown spaces are up 14% this year over last year and have almost doubled since 2001, according to Listing Information Network, which tracks Boston real estate trends.
Parking structures aren’t always the solution. Although 2.8 million parking spaces were built in structures from 1996 through last year, the number of construction starts fell from a peak of 465 in 2001 to about 405 this year, says Dale Denda, research director for Parking Market Research in McLean, Va.
Part of the reason for the reluctance to build new parking structures is cost. Construction costs alone are up more than 35% in the past six years to an average of about $13,900 a space. That doesn’t include the soaring price of urban land.
“The world has changed,” says Donald Shoup, an urban planning professor at the University of California at Los Angeles and author of The High Cost of Free Parking, which advocates letting market forces set on-street parking rates as a way of revitalizing cities. “We’re realizing that the new parking is wildly expensive and hard to pay for.”
Some planners are starting to look to technology for help. Borrowing ideas from Europe, they’re coming up with solutions such as robotic garages that whisk cars around on metal pallets, and parking spots reserved by cellphones or found through in-car navigation screens.
‘Find alternatives’ to parking
Some cities are trying to wean themselves and their residents away from the driving that requires more parking. Instead, they’re plotting to lure shoppers, diners and workers onto public transit, bikes or their own feet.
“There are cities all across the country that are actively saying, ‘We want to limit the amount of parking we provide,’ and, ‘We want people to find alternatives,’ ” says David Fields, senior planner for Nelson/Nygaard Consulting Associates in New York.
Even shopping centers and malls, traditional homes to expanses of free parking big enough to be their own small countries, are trying new ideas to ease parking hassles for their customers. Westfield, a big shopping center operator, has close-in spots for expectant moms at all its 59 properties. The lines are painted pink.
It’s also experimenting with call-ahead reserved parking, preferential paid parking in a gated lot and a parking shuttle at various California centers.
General Motors is sponsoring valet services at two malls, Phipps Plaza in Atlanta and Town Center at Boca Raton in Florida. Cadillac drivers get free valet parking at both. At Town Center, so do Saab and Hummer owners.
But even when valet parking is available, some people are reluctant. Hector Rodriguez, 40, a Los Angeles hair salon owner, says he hesitates to hand the keys to his customized Chrysler 300C to an attendant. “I don’t want people driving my car.”
In car-dependent Los Angeles, the time it takes to find a parking spot on the street has doubled in the past five years, estimates Shanette Madden, 40, a Los Angeles property manager. She pulled her Nissan Versa into a no-parking zone and sent her daughter Malika, 16, off on an errand along Melrose Avenue one Sunday afternoon. She says she had hunted for 15 minutes to find a metered space, then gave up. Parking is not only hard to find, she says, but becoming more expensive. “It’s just like gas (prices). What can you do?”
Bracey, 40, pausing as he hoofed back from the shop, says he won’t even venture into Santa Monica, the affluent, liberal enclave to the west where the popular outdoor mall is rimmed by often-crowded parking structures.
Santa Monica is one of those communities that knows it has a problem and is trying to find a solution. Last month, it started a website, www.parkingspacenow.smgov.net, that gives the availability of spaces in 14 downtown lots and garages. It’s updated every five seconds.
“The city doesn’t really like parking,” says Lucy Dyke, Santa Monica’s transportation planning manager. It “doesn’t want to waste money on parking spaces we really don’t need.”
Instead, the Web page is aimed at making better use of spaces, encouraging people to find other means to get downtown when lots are full.
New solutions
The rebirth of downtowns and resulting crunch, combined with new electronic devices, are leading to a “parking technology revolution,” says Dennis Burns, vice president of consultants Carl Walker.
Some of the ideas include:
•Automated parking. Think of a vending machine in reverse. In automated parking, motorists drive their cars onto a steel plate in a garage and get out of the car. The plate is then whisked away like a pallet in a warehouse, all robotically, to a parking space.
“Your car can never be stolen or dented,” says Lee Lazarus, president of A.P.T. Parking Technologies in New York.
Eliminating ramps, walkways — even lowering the ceiling — allows a developer to dramatically reduce the size of the structure. It can pack almost double the number of spaces of a conventional garage, Lazarus says.
While they’re popular in Europe, the USA so far has only a few automated garages, including a 312-space garage in Hoboken, N.J., and a 74-space structure in Washington, D.C.
While they free vital space in a building that can be used for people instead of cars, automated parking is expensive, at more than $20,000 a spot, Lazarus says.
•Finding parking through in-car navigation. XM Satellite Radio is one of three companies working to develop a system that would allow the navigation screens in vehicles to be used to hunt down available parking spots. XM is working with one of the nation’s largest parking providers, Standard Parking, and a technology company, Quixote Transportation Technologies. The system would use color-keyed icons to show how many spots are available in a garage or lot.
•Reserving by cellphone. A company called MobileParking is developing a system in which drivers can call ahead on their cellphones to reserve parking spots. Early next year, MobileParking hopes to create a network of 3,100 parking structures in the 30 biggest U.S. cities where drivers can call or message ahead. In some cases, parking attendants will rope off a special area for MobileParking customers, says President Jason Boseck.
In addition to the parking charge, customers will pay a $1.75 service fee.
•Paying by cellphone. Rather than having to run out to feed the meter, motorists who park at one of about 90 spaces along the famed Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, Calif., can arrange to get a call on their cellphone asking them if they want to extend their time on the parking meter.
“You pay for parking and if you want to add time, you can do that with a cellphone,” says Chris Chettle, vice president of Digital Payment Technologies, which co-developed the system.
It works because instead of standard parking meters, the spaces are connected to kiosks — one for every nine spaces — that accept payment by credit card or currency.
So far, though, not many parkers have registered to use the cellphone feature, says Oscar Delgado, the city’s parking operations manager.
A San Francisco company, Spark Parking, is creating a cellphone payment system for garages. Instead of barriers and ticket machines, a parking structure would be open. Motorists would drive directly to an open space. A sensor in the stall would keep track of how long they parked and bill them, says CEO Cooper Marcus.
The system will help give planners a better picture of how lots and structures are used, helpful in setting parking rates.
For every car, three spaces
Higher rates might actually help consumers, he says, by creating more turnover of spaces.
“If pizza was free, everyone would eat lots of pizza. If parking is free, everyone is going to use lots of parking,” Marcus says.
Parking consumes enormous amounts of space.
“Every car needs three spaces: one at home; one at work; and one at play,” says Steve Shannon, president of ParkingMan, a consultancy in Pitman, N.J. “It’s difficult to accommodate all these cars.”
The key appears to be striking a balance of need. In Ann Arbor, Mich., University of Michigan students compete with other residents for coveted parking spaces downtown. At its worst, motorists sometimes can take 10 minutes finding a spot, says Susan Pollay, executive director of the city’s Downtown Development Authority.
The city is studying the parking issue but hopes that parking is only one solution, along with buses, bikes and walking.
“We have become smarter in realizing that parking is not the silver bullet,” Pollay says. Rather, it’s just “a tool in the toolbox” to a total transportation solution.
Source:Â Â Â http://www.usatoday.com
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Dallas’ compact-car parking spaces a growing problem
September 6, 2008
Dallas to consider changes as fitness of compact-car spaces shrinks
Like a heavy man wedged into a pair of bicycle shorts, it’s a tight fit and nobody’s too happy with the result.
While more drivers in Dallas are finding it difficult to fit their vehicles in compact-car parking spaces, Joanne Pratt worries that if the city eliminates the spaces, there will be fewer places to park.
Yet compact-car parking spaces seem to be everywhere in Dallas, especially on the day after Christmas when lots are full and the last thing you want to do is decide whether a decent parking spot is worth a door ding or a trip through an open window.
Now, after years of complaints from drivers and developers, the Dallas City Council appears poised to do something next year about the narrow spaces that so often crop up between behemoth SUVs.
“I have a small car, and it doesn’t even fit in these spaces. It’s virtually impossible to get in and out of the car,” said council member Angela Hunt, whose four-door Audi tests the 7 ½ -foot width of a compact space.
A standard parking space is a foot wider. But sometime in the late 1980s, no one seems to recall exactly when, the city adopted a policy that it hoped would help solve growing parking woes and nudge people toward buying smaller, more fuel-efficient cars.
Like so many programs that start out with good intentions, however, it didn’t quite work out that way.
“People don’t go into a car dealership and purchase a compact car based on the fact there is compact-car parking,” District 11 council member Linda Koop said.
And as more fuel-efficient cars, including hybrids, become more common, even they are proving to be a tight fit.
“The reality of the marketplace is that even the hybrids are big,” said Theresa O’Donnell, director of the city’s Development Services department.
At a recent council meeting, Ms. Koop broached the subject of compact-car parking with an offhanded comment that she would like to see it go away.
Her aside prompted a resounding chorus from fellow council members who, almost to a person, said that changes must be made.
“It hasn’t been as effective as a lot of people thought it would be,” council member Jerry Allen said.
During a recent busy lunch rush at Eatzi’s on Oak Lawn Avenue, the problem was as clear as yellow stripes on black asphalt.
“I’d be curious to see how many people have door dings in spaces like this,” said Russ Plum of Frisco.
Mr. Plum and three friends were grabbing a quick takeaway lunch, but his friend Patrick Garcia had a tough time squeezing his Dodge Durango into one of the compact-car spots.
Mr. Garcia said that when he goes out in central Dallas “you’re forced pretty much to valet.”
The problem might be clear, but a solution could be complicated.
If the council gets rid of compact-car parking but requires developers to provide the same number of spaces per lot, more land will have to be devoted to parking. If it lowers the required number of spaces per lot, there will be less parking to go around. Less parking in lots means more parking in streets, with cars spilling into neighborhoods, such as those along Greenville Avenue.
“In some areas, it’s not as problematic. But again, where you have the restaurant adjacent to neighborhoods, it really does create friction,” said David Cossum, assistant director of Development Services.
Mr. Cossum likely will be in charge of bringing recommendations to the council next year on how to fix the compact-car parking problem.
The issue will have to be reviewed carefully, and easy solutions aren’t likely to be found, he said.
And for those drivers who are hoping to see the narrow spaces disappear at a favorite restaurant or shop, don’t hold your breath.
It’s unlikely that existing spaces will disappear in the short term, Ms. Koop said. Restriping and retrofitting lots would be costly and confusing, city planners agreed.
Neil Emmons, a veteran city plan commissioner who has studied the parking issue, said the most logical solution would be to permit new parking lots to be smaller, with the understanding that in the future, more people in Dallas will be walking or using public transportation.
“If I were going to make a recommendation, I would say reduce the number of spaces required, so that all of the spaces might have a wider stripe but require no more land usage,” he said.
As it stands, the general requirements for developers in the city are: Restaurants must have one parking space for every 100 square feet of interior space. Retail stores must have one space for every 200 square feet, and offices must have one space for every 300 square feet.
For a developer, that can quickly add up to a lot of pricey concrete.
Frequently, a builder will turn to compact spaces to fulfill the parking requirements with less concrete and less land, said Willie Cothrum, a former council member who now lobbies City Hall on behalf of businesses.
Under city ordinances, a builder can have as much as 35 percent of a lot devoted to compact-car spaces in most parts of Dallas, Mr. Cothrum said.
If council members decided to simply do away with compact-car parking without addressing parking requirements overall, developers would have to devote more land to parking, Mr. Cothrum said.
That’s something that neither developers nor council members seem to want.
“It doesn’t make any sense to do that because it’s not a good use of land,” Ms. Hunt said.
So with the new year, new kinds of parking lots are likely to be conceived in Dallas. Expect them to hold fewer vehicles but more comfortably.
“What I really think is going to happen in a lot of our new developments, we’re asking that it be sustainable, more walkable, so you’ll have less need [for] cars,” Ms. O’Donnell said.
THE PROBLEM: Narrow compact-car parking spaces that pose a tight fit even for the fuel-efficient cars for which they were intended.
CURRENT REGULATIONS: Up to 35 percent of a parking lot can be designated for compact-car spaces, which at 7 ½ -feet wide are a foot narrower than regular slots.
POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS: Do away with compact spaces, at least in new developments. New parking lots either would have to use more land to meet current requirements, or the city would reduce the required number of spaces, meaning lots overall could be smaller.
Source: http://www.dallasnews.com
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